


Law and Disorder: Alternia

by blottingtheink



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Black Romance, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blottingtheink/pseuds/blottingtheink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi’s a legislacerator, post-mortem division, and she’s been waiting for a case like this since her assignment. Vriska just wants to hunt monsters on TV.</p><p>This warehouse isn’t big enough for the both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Law and Disorder: Alternia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round Two of the 2012 Homestuck Shipping Olympics. All thanks go out to my beta, who was the the most amazing cheerleader and editor a girl could ask for, and knew exactly what this needed.

You hear the crew first, because one of them is yelling, like an  _idiot._

“Are you sure this is the right place? Because, that's what you said, last time _,_ and we lost–” his voice is muffled by a couple of heavy thumps.

You pick up your pace, checking the warehouse hallways for the sharp smell of ether as you go.

You’ve been tracking Loxley Reygan for perigrees, ever since news came from the capital of a brownblooded ghosttroll who’d stolen a shipment of culling forks and was turning lusii murderous all over the planet.

He’d been killed by a sea-dweller blackcourting Reygan’s moirail. Post-Reygan’s corporeal death, however, the moirail had continued to refuse her advances, and gotten herself killed. Reygan killed the seadweller in revenge. Unfortunate, perhaps, but completely legal.

Only, he appeared to have sworn revenge on all sea-dwellers, if his assassinlog was anything to go by. More recently, he turned his attention to the empire that empowered them. His most recent kills include blue and violet-blooded trolls worryingly close to Feferi.

It is such a sweet, sweet case. It smells so beautifully of treason and intrigue. It will be the post-mortem trial of a century. So many psiocerced-filicides! You cannot wait to get him in a robo-noose.

And now some film crew is mucking it up with their yelling.

An annoyingly common situation. A sweep ago, Alternia and the Extended Empire was rocked by the terrorvision premire of _Real-Life Adventures of A Real-Life Blueblooded Troll Who Tracks and Culls Real-Life Monsters and Deadly Creatures of All Types, Including, But Not Limited To, Rogue Rainbow Drinkers, Wild Lusii, Trolls Who Turn Into Growlbeasts During Certain Moon Phases, and Other Forms of Life Continued Beyond the Grave, And She Does It All in Real-Life On Camera, None of That Sissy Fake Stuff._

You’ve been dealing with amateurs who want to make a name for themselves ever since.

The trick, you’ve found, is to get them out quickly. You adjust your uniform to better display your badge and slam open the door.

The warehouse is full of trolls carrying film equipment. It’s a better set-up than you expected. Someone's got--is that a  _flying harness_?, there’s a pile of make-up beginning on top of some of the crates, and there’re cameras everywhere. It stinks of paint, exhaustion, and mild dismay.

The chatter slowly dies as they notice you standing in the doorway. You give them your best smile, and the scent of dismay deepens.

Outside the high windows, someone laughs. "Even if  _what,_ Ekigam? The Cull of the Wild Lusus is the best terrorvision anyone’s ever seen! _Alternascope_ called it an unbelievable breakthrough in genre! A passionate mixing of gore and pathos! The best TV in 100 sweeps!”

That’s… that’s _Vriska_.

The star of _Real Life Adventures_ , worst FLARPing partner in Alternia’s history, ghostificator of friends, liar, cheat, and inspiration of surviviscetionists everywhere. She has been the bane of your existence every single sweep of your entire life.

And now she is trying to take over your crime scene.

You march over to a greenblood holding a voice amplificator. He looks nervously at your badge and hands it over.

“Vriska! I am not surprised you memorized your press! But I hear you _lost a leg_ in that episode! You cannot lose a limb to make up for shitty terrorvision every time!”

You pause. “Also! _Alternascope_ is terrible.”

“Is that—Terezi? Terezi Pyrope?” There’s a scrabbling sound from the roof, and Vriska Serket’s upside-down head appears in the window. She smells ridiculous, like a cloud of licorice wormbeasts trying to squirm their way free of a very large blueberry. “It is! What are you doing here?” Inexplicably, she sounds delighted.

“This is a post-death pre-crime scene! I am here fulfilling my duty as an officer of the law!” you say. “The question is: what are _you_ doing here?”

Instead of giving you an answer, she dives in through the window. Headfirst.

She is so reckless! She attempts an acrobatic fucking pirouette in midair, but lands hard, her robo-leg screeching. The greenblood gives a little yelp. You pat his arm and hand him the amplificator.

You would feel sorrier for him if he hadn’t agreed to work with Vriska Serket. His punishment only fits his crime.

Vriska looks up as you approach, and grins. You haven’t seen her in sweeps, ever since the disaster that was your FLARP campaigning. You’ve been avoiding her show like a bad case of squawkbeast pox. She looks—different. She’s grown blueblood tall, all long limbs and spider grace, like she’s actually grown used to them. You doubt it.

Other than her eyepatch, she’s collected more scars than you can count. One set starts on the edge of her jaw, and trails downward; you can’t quite smell where it disappears under her shirt. Honestly. It’s a miracle she’s still alive.

“So! Terezi Pyrope.” She says your name obnoxiously, like a circus announcaster. “What’s this about a crime scene?”

“This is one, Vriska. Your presence is illegal.”

 “I dunno,” she says, rubbing at her eyepatch.  “Looks like a film set to me. Look at all these cameras!”

She pauses, and laughs. “Oops! I mean smell them. Can you smell them? Do you want me to get you one to lick?”

You take a deep breath. “I’m trying to do a job. A very important job. One that is essential to the empire, and should not be interrupted by reckless filmmaking!”

“I’m trying to do _my_ job!” she snaps, laughter gone as quickly as it came. She narrows her eyes. “Are you here for Reygan?”

“Are _you_ —” you begin, but she cuts you off.

“Yes! And _I’m_ going to catch him, and it will be the best terrorvision anyone has ever seen. So you can just leave him to me, and stop shoving your bone bulge in everything already.”

 “Shoving my—!” You gesture at the warehouse. “Look at this mess! No one would _ever_ be fooled, much less Reygan,” and she cuts you off, _again_.

“Oh yeah, because you’re much better, Ms. Smartypants. We got in your crime scene just fine, didn’t we?  You couldn’t stop us.”

You go hot all over.

“I was doing things you can’t know about, because they require legislacerator clearance—”

“Right,” she scoffs. “Clearance matters. Tell that to all the criminals I’ve brought down.”

“A travesty of justice! Ms. Terrorvision Superstar! You always _cull_ them. Without a trial! You never had any respect—”

“Oh my god, no one cares! Feferi doesn’t care when I cull them. I bet your _boss_ doesn’t care! Everyone loves my show, because my show is the _best_ —”

“Would you let me finish?” you yell. She opens her mouth—probably to point out that you just _did_. And you are going to arrest her for contempt.

Her trial will have to wait until after Reygan’s, but you will enjoy it _just as much_.

“Excuse me, I really don’t care, one way or another, if we stay here, or what,” says the greenblood, and you almost scream. “But, Serket, um, if we’re staying, we’ve got to get filming _now_. The light is going. Which. You know, would not be a problem if we did this on a soundstage. Can I just say that? _Again_?”

“Shut up, Ekigam!” she yells over your head. “My show has to be real, and full of grit! Which _I_ have told you! Your ideas are stupid and lame.”

You cannot believe she is arguing with her co-workers about lightingright now, staring over your head at the greenblood, like you weren’t having an important discussion. Like she thinks she’s not going to be out of here in a minute. Forget arresting her. You’re going to stab her first. In the neck, which she’ll never see coming, since she’s _not looking at you_. You’ll just put her corpse on trial. It’s not unheard of.

“You could do this on a _soundstage_?” you hiss, and poke her in the chest. That is not what you meant to say. You’re not sure what you meant to say, but that was not it.

She looks down at your finger, and back up at your face. Her good eye widens. You are going to poke it out, you think.

“Oh my god,” she breathes, and wets her lips.

You are going to poke out her _whole face_.

“Terezi. You _hate_ me.”

The words crash over you like ice water. “No, I don’t,” you say reflexively. You don’t.

“I don’t,” you repeat.

“Terezi,” she says again, and steps towards you. You are standing very close. She’s like, a wall. A long, blueberry wall. You can hardly breathe.

She’s smiling. Her teeth are very sharp. “You really, really do,” she says, and steps even closer.

You push her away blindly. “I _don’t_ ,” you snarl.

You’ll just... you’ll wait for Reygan on the roof. You’ll hide in a chimney. He’ll never know you’re there.

 “Don’t you walk away from me, Terezi Pyrope!”

A hand closes around the back of your collar and wrenches you backwards, and you find yourself caught in a headlock, your back pressed up against her, your face into the metal plates of her robo-arm.

“Stop acting like you’re better than me,” she hisses into your ear. She jerks her arm against your attempts to dislodge it. One of the plates slices open your cheek. “You’re _not_.”

“You’re not,” she murmurs, and bites your ear. Your body jerks, involuntarily. She must feel it, because she laughs, her breath hot against your face. It smells like blueberries. Everything you can smell now, in fact, is blueberry and licorice and metal, and you have never felt more like killing something. You sigh, and stop scrabbling at her arms. You turn your head to the side, put your mouth against the underside of her jaw, and scrape with your teeth.

She shudders, and the moment you feel her grip relax, you slam your head back into her face. You slip out of her grip and sweep her feet out from under her. She lands on her back, her robotic limbs clanging, and stares up at you. She looks wrecked, her gaze wild and furious, her teeth bared, her long arms braced to launch herself upwards.

She looks, you think wildly, _beautiful_. You want to take her apart.

“Don’t,” you snarl, panting. “Don’t touch me.”

She lights up like it’s Twelfth Perigee’s Eve.

The next thing you know, she’s tackled you, and you’re lost in a tangle of limbs. She gets you pinned, her shoulders on your elbows, and grabs your face. You have a split second of her gaze, searching and searing, and then she puts her mouth on yours. Your brain goes white-hot, and you arch against her. Your elbow catches her ribs, and she grunts. The kiss is more teeth than lips, and you feel her fangs slice your gums open. You think you bite through her bottom lip. One of you moans, and you tangle your hands in her hair.

You do, you _hate_ her, you think breathlessly. It’s lightning in your veins. It’s like someone threw open the door to a farmbeast keepblock under your bloodpusher, which doesn’t even make sense – but you feel thrown open with possibility. You are going to ruin her in all the ways. Every single one.  

She’s released your face, and is working her way down your neck, open-mouthed bites that break the skin and make your breath hitch. She licks at one, pushing her tongue at the ripped skin, and you gasp.

You get a hand around one of her horns and wrench her sideways, flipping both of you. One of your legs slides between Vriska’s and you shove it up, and she whines. You grin against her upper arm, until she responds in kind, and it _hurts_ , but it’s _good_ , it’s so good. You pull her hair in retribution, and lower your head to where her robo-arm meets her shoulder.

“Um,” someone says.

You lift your head from where you are biting at Vriska’s arm. It takes a second for your nose to clear.

Oh. Right.

The crew. They are, to a troll, blushing, lit up like colorful beacons. You imagine what you look like to them—you’re plastered across Vriska, your legs tangled, one hand wrapped around her horn, both of you smeared with each other’s blood. You can feel bruises beginning under your left eye and all down your sides. 

 Vriska recovers before you. “Oops,” she huffs. “Get off, Terezi. Looks like I’ve got a job to do. Sorry! Another time, maybe!”

She starts to sit up. “A job to do?” you hiss.

And you bite her on the face.

You push her back and sink your teeth into her cheekbone, deep, mouthing at it, and then again, just under her eye, and once more, biting at the pulse point in her temple. She writhes and kicks, but when you pull back, she looks drugged.

Her good eye has gone almost totally black. She licks at her lips, quick, and that thing, that released thing in your stomach, it _roars_. You have to bite her again, right under her other ear.

“Maybe, Serket. Maybe,” you whisper, and tear your teeth down her throat. She lets out a little cry.

You push yourself off, making sure to press down hard on her mauled shoulder.

“Well,” you say, standing. You straighten your uniform and nod at the crew. “I think there’s a lot of work to be done, if you’re going to get out of here before Mr. Iced-Chocolate Confectionary arrives.”

From the floor, Vriska leans up on one hand. “No! Guys, don’t do anything. We’re totally staying.”

You laugh. “Vriska, you don’t think you can go on terrorvision looking like that, do you?”

“What? Oh—you underestimate my audience, Pyrope. What’s a little blood to the watchers of _Real-Life Adventures of a Real-Life Blueblooded Troll_? Nothing! They _love_ it when I get bloody! We’ll just say Reygan brought extra lusii—”

Someone coughs.

Vriska looks at her crew, and one of them, slowly, lifts a mirror.

You smell the moment she realizes that she looks, basically, like something out of a black porno. You can’t help grinning as her mouth drops. She touches her face, fingers prodding gently at the mess you made of her cheek.

She bursts into loud guffaws, and drops back against the concrete.

Over her laughter, you point at the crewmembers and gesture at their piles of stuff. “Well?” you ask. “Get moving! I will give you thirty minutes.”

As they start to move, you step over to where Vriska is still hiccupping with laughter, and kick her in the side. “Get off my crime scene, Serket.”

She grabs your pant leg and smiles up at you. She looks really, really horrible. There’s a bit of teal smeared down her neck. You’re not sure how it got there, but you want to lick it away. And then maybe rip off her robo-arm. Slowly. Her smile broadens, like she knows.

“I’ll call you,” she says, and hiccups.

You snort. “Well. I won’t answer.”

“Is that so?” Her grip on your ankle tightens.

Her gaze, when you meet it, is hard, despite the lazy smile still flitting at the edges of her mouth. You can’t believe you hate someone who goes around looking like a thinkpan-damaged barkbeast.

God help you, you imagine you’re going to have to budget extra time to every crime scene, from here on out. You’ll definitely have to figure out how she found out about Reygan, and cut off that source of information. Maybe you can send her a picture of the troll, when you’re done with them.

“Yes,” you say. “It is.”


End file.
